


B.Y.O.B

by TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Body Dysphoria, Body Horror, Comedy, Devils, House Party, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mild Language, Monsters, Soft Boys, Werewolves, Zombies, fluff??, general weirdness, gross out humor, zombie-related gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:20:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23045422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard/pseuds/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard
Summary: Bring. Your. Own. Brains.
Relationships: Bang Chan/Hwang Hyunjin, Kim Seungmin/Seo Changbin
Comments: 29
Kudos: 166





	B.Y.O.B

“Hey, you, ummm… you kinda dropped this.”

The voice was quiet, soft, nearly timid. The treble of it almost entirely lost beneath the bass of the trap music pounding up through the floorboards from downstairs.

Bang Chan spun around. “Dropped what,” he questioned. He hadn’t taken anything with him upstairs, he thought. He'd left his stuff with Changbin on the couch.

“This.” Standing in front of the door to the bathroom Chan had just left was another of the party-goers. The guy was about Chan’s height. Cute with a round face and shy smile. His hair was gelled back to expose his forehead and his tank top barely concealed the sculpted chest beneath. The man said, “Don’t want you to leave something so, ummm… _important_ behind.”

He pointed and Chan followed the guy's finger towards the bathroom’s door handle where Chan’s hand still tightly clutched the doorknob, the skin pale and dry with the faintest hint of green beneath the painted fingernails. 

Just to be sure, Chan looked down at ~~his left hand~~ where his left hand was supposed to be. Sure enough, his arm ended abruptly just above the wrist; his skin flaked up around the opening, stretching like frayed ribbons, and a tiny bit of white bone poked out from the half-rotted, greyish muscle. Chan slapped his good hand over the wound self-consciously. He grinned bashfully. “I didn’t even feel it come off. Sorry about that.” He shuffled towards the door and the stranger stepped backwards hurriedly as if he feared Chan might take a bite out of him right there in the middle of the hallway. “Ummm. Sorry.” Chan pried his cold, dead hand off of the doorknob. He had to grunt a bit to unhook the thumb.

The stranger’s face contorted in mild horror as he watched.

Chan swallowed hard and backed away. “Thanks,” he said, holding up his hand. "Definitely would have forgot where I left this." The tendons in the hand were still a little stiff and the joints in the fingers made erratic popping noises. “What’s your name?” 

The man didn’t answer him. He simply backed into the bathroom, his face a bit ashen.

“I’m--” Chan started. Then the door slammed shut in his face. “--Chan.”

Welp.

So much for hitting on a cutie.

Chan stared down at his dead hand. He even shook it a little in mild irritation, like it would learn a lesson if he did. “You scared him shitless. Thanks a lot.” He turned back around and headed down the hallway, trying to remember how he wound up here. He usually didn’t do house parties--there were just too many opportunities for him to _lose his damn head_ \--but Changbin had dragged him out, citing it was an important night. Something something welcome back party something something. Chan hadn’t been paying much attention.

The house was massive. Artsy. Some rich kid’s place. 

Jeongin the freshman? That sounded about right. Wasn’t that what Changbin had said? Jeongin. The freshman. Yeah. That was correct. 

The house was a modern masterpiece, all light-colored wood and sharp angles and glass. Stupidly huge for a family of three. Evidently, there was no parental supervision thanks to late-stage capitalism and cross-country business trips and there were also no on-staff housekeeping until Monday thanks to the federal holiday. To put it plainly, it was a free-for-all. The house was filled to the brim with frat boys and sorority girls dancing wildly and smoking pot and doing some heavy petting in the corners. 

Chan hid his dead hand from view underneath his leather jacket and then made his way down the L-shaped wooden stairs.

The place was packed. Normies and monsters just vibing together. The mermaids had taken over the backyard pool and the vampires were apparently in the basement, luring partiers down the stairs with ‘Free Sucks’ signs hanging around their necks. 

Chan never could get along with either of those groups too well.

Not for lack of trying, though.

The mermaids found him boring because he didn’t struggle for breath whenever they tried yanking him into the university pool. The vampires found him unappetizing due to the fact that the blood in Chan’s veins had dried up ages ago. Really, the only decent monster friend Chan had was a werewolf and that was because the guy was so good at fetching whenever Chan did something totally benign like stretch or lift grocery bags only to send one of his body parts sailing through the air.

At the bottom of the stairs, Chan was immediately swallowed by the crowd.

Mainly normies.

Covered in sweat, eyes red-rimmed and glassy from vaping or drinking or pill popping. Bodies writhing to the beat. 

Chan found it a bit ironic how closely normies resembled a zombie horde when they were like this, all shambling movement and hive mind, body parts squeezed in so close. It struck a bit close to home. Reminded him of that fateful day back in high school. Ugh. Chan might have felt more comfortable at one of the smaller monster get-togethers on campus. Like one of those things the Werewolf Student Association threw every new moon. Something with only twenty or so people around with Depeche Mode and Duran Duran as background noise. 

No. No. Chan wasn’t going to complain. He was going to enjoy this. 

Have a True College Experience™!

Deeper into the madness Chan went. Deeper into the noise. Past the huge kitchen with the professional-grade appliances where a beer pong game was in full swing, past the long kitchen island where girls lined up to take body shots off a heavily-muscled dude in a backwards snapback. 

Then he was in the living room. The air hazy with weed smoke, the ceiling lights dimmed, the air conditioning not quite turned up enough.

Seo Changbin was right where Chan had left him, stretched across one end of the sectional couch on his stomach as if he were trying to be painted like one of somebody’s French girls. “What’s that look for,” the younger man asked, narrowing his golden eyes up at Chan’s paler-than-usual face.

“You know... The usual. Lost my entire hand in front of a hot guy,” Chan explained. He raised the appendage in question and then swatted Changbin in the hip with it, making the guy yelp, sit up and give him room.

Changbin said, “At least it wasn’t your whole arm like last time. Didn’t you make some poor girl pass out?”

The memory was still fresh in Chan’s barely-functioning brain. Even though that had happened way last semester. “She vomited on me first.” He wasn’t sure if it would be possible to live down such humiliation. There were still folks who made ‘an arm and a leg’ jokes around him. “I told her not to pull so hard. My arm was already loose from all of the--” 

“Masturbating?”

“--homework I’d been doing.” Chan decided to ignore Changbin’s comment. He eased down on the couch next to his best friend. The upholstery was pillowy soft beneath his frame. Easy to sink in to. No wonder Changbin hadn't moved. “Can’t she tell I’m undead just by looking at me?” He waved his good hand (and his dead hand, by proxy) at his sunken-looking eyes and hollow cheeks.

“I mean, with the all-black clothes and eyeliner, you just end up looking fucking goth, my dude.” Changbin cracked open a fresh beer and it frothed up and bubbled over the side of the can. He noisily slurped at the run-off, pink tongue darting across the tips of his clawed fingers. “You just don’t look like a zombie.”

“You’re lucky you _look_ like a wolf. There’s no surprises.” 

Changbin stopped wagging his tail. “And you’re lucky you can’t _smell_ yourself. Imagine what I have to go through.” He sucked down a swig of his cheap beer and then smacked his lips to savor the taste.

“My olfactory nerves stopped working a long fucking time ago.” Chan placed his dead hand down on the couch between them and then leaned towards the coffee table in front of the couch to grab a glass bottle of brain out of his six-pack. It was the good, expensive, import stuff he had to drive across town to buy. An entire 20% of its composition was human brain, stewed and brewed overseas. Best at room temperature. A bit of a peachy finish. Went great with a barbecued intestine and some brined lung.

It didn’t take long for Chan to realize his dilemma: he couldn’t pop the top off the bottle with only one usable hand and he definitely wasn’t cool enough to know how to do so on the edge of the table. He stared at the stump at the end of his left arm in defeat.

Changbin raised his voice to be heard over the pulsing, electric music. “Need help reattaching it?” 

“If you don’t mind.” Chan sat his bottle back down on the coffee table.

“Let me just…” Changbin started. He took another gulp of his beer and it finally seemed like he’d quenched his thirst. He leaned forward and sat the can on the table next to Chan’s bottle. “You should be like Seungmin and learn how to wiggle your fingers even when your hand is on the other side of the room.”

“Sorry, I don’t know any party tricks.” As a zombie, Chan always kept needles and surgical thread handy so that he could hold together his sloughed-off parts. “I’d rather pull myself together than be gawked at while I’m in pieces.”

“Seungmin’s neat, though.” As Chan’s best friend, Changbin had done his fair share of body part fetching and had suffered more sewing needle pin pricks than any one person should.

“I didn’t say he wasn’t.” 

Changbin opened his mouth and burped. Then burped again. Lower and longer. Almost a growl.

“Just admit you have a damn crush, Changbin,” said Chan.

The werewolf hooked his eyes in Chan’s direction, his expression equal parts surprise and irritation. “How do you even know?”

Well, Seungmin was easy to crush on. He had a healthy green-grey complexion, his hair was nicely groomed and had a purplish tint to it. He was the football team's goalie and looked great in the knee socks and shorts. He'd even managed to hold on to all of his own facial features over the years. He was a real catch. Chan said, “Just because I eat brains doesn’t mean I don’t have one.”

“Is it _that_ obvious? God. I hope he hasn’t noticed me staring. That would be so embarrassing.” Changbin searched the crowd of party-goers as if expecting Seungmin to be standing right in front of them, overhearing everything. “I keep having dreams about burying his sternum in my backyard at home.”

Chan cooed, “Aww. How romantic!”

“Shut the fuck up,” Changbin yapped, the fur of his tail bristling. “Worry about yourself. I brought you out here to loosen up and help you get over your ex. You gonna go back to the dorm alone tonight?" Then, to add further shame, he added, "Again?”

“He isn’t my ex… Not really,” Chan complained. Minho's face flickered across his mind.

“You dated for the entirety of semester break.”

“It wasn’t dating. It was just… hanging out. Talking.” Minho was a normie. Of course things couldn't get too deep.

Changbin rolled his eyes. “He’s your ex. He told you he was breaking up with you. You can’t fucking break up with someone you aren’t with.”

“Fine. He and I were dating.” Chan stared at the bottle of brain on the table. At the opaque, reddish-pink liquid inside. At the pretty Renaissance painting on the label. “And I’m here to get over him.”

“Good boy.” Changbin leaned over and inspected Chan’s gaping wound. He resisted the urge to sniff at the bone jutting out from Chan’s innards. "So how did this happen? You punch a guy?"

"No. A doorknob." Suddenly, Chan was struck with the kind of loneliness and poetic ennui that only came to him when he’d seen the bottom of a bottle or two. “Look at me,” he loudly declared. “I fall apart under the lightest pressure! What makes you think I can get laid at a normie party?”

Changbin didn’t answer him. Probably silently acknowledging Chan’s point.

“Would it be easier to just, like, buy prosthetic pieces,” Chan questioned. He already had a bottle of brain in his system from before his bathroom trip and he knew it was the pink stuff talking now but that didn’t stop the words. “I wouldn’t have to keep bugging you if I did.”

“It’s cool, Chan,” Changbin told him. “We’ve been rooming since we were freshies. I’m used to it. I don’t mind sniffing out your misplaced toes and popped-out eyeballs every now and then. It keeps my senses sharp.”

“It’s not every now and then. It’s _all the time_.” Beneath his leather jacket and plaid Tripp NYC pants, Chan’s body was wrapped in gauze and bandages, jammed with dozens of bobby pins, meters of masking tape holding him together. “I’m constantly breaking. I’m a mess.”

Changbin frowned hard. Slurring his words, he said, “Chan, you’re my-- You're my friend. My best friend. My buddy. I enjoy taking care of you. If you were a wolf, you'd be in my pack. I appreciate you, dude. To the point where I wish I could groom you and lick you but I can’t because your skin would slide off. That’s a joke, Chan. Laugh, Chan.” He waited but his friend didn’t give him one. Not even a single _ha_! Changbin grumbled, “Actually, I don’t lick you because you taste like grave dirt.”

Chan laughed. Once and humorlessly. “You’ve licked me? When?”

“That information is classified and if you ever found out, I’d have to kill you.”

Chan scoffed. “You’ve taken my head off before.”

“By accident!”

Chan laughed again. Genuinely.

The happiness was a temporary salve. It fixed everything for a little bit. Then Chan was struck by a fresh tidal wave of existentialism. “But, like, I could do what all of the other zombies do… Just leave my old parts behind… Buy new ones from the store. Arms... Legs... I could be a whole other me every couple of days.”

“Chan, if you don’t _chill_. You’re like…” Changbin burped hard. “You’re like one of the only zombies I know that still looks like themselves. Isn’t that awesome? You still look like your high school yearbook photo. Ugh. Come on. Let’s put you back together before you kill my buzz.” Changbin grabbed Chan’s dead hand off the couch a bit harder than he meant to and even though it was not connected to him, Chan still felt the tiniest smidgen of pain drilling into his palm as Changbin’s claws dug into the cold flesh. Changbin’s wolf ears flicked forward in curiosity. “How hot was this hot guy? Scale of one to ten?”

The change in topic left Chan’s head reeling until he remembered why he was trying to stick his hand back on in the first place. “Very cute,” Chan admitted. “Very hot." Just as hot as Minho. "A solid eight. Eight and three quarters… but based on his reaction, he was definitely a normie. And maybe one of those hateful ones on top of that.” Chan reared back on the couch and dug around in his jacket pockets. It took longer than usual, not being able to use his dominant hand and all, but he eventually freed his handy-dandy emergency limb-reattachment kit. Or, to put it simply, an old pack of Marlboro Reds now stuffed with needles and thread and even a roll of tape. He handed it to Changbin. “I think I scared him off. He couldn’t even look at me. Slammed the door in my face before I could ask for his name! I'm such an awful flirt.” Chan didn’t think a guy so beefy and tough-looking could get scared. Especially of someone as weightless and gaunt as he was. “I’m tired of scaring away normies. It gets so old.”

Changbin gave his friend a wolfish grin. “Oh, I’d rather scare normies off than attract them.” He was already pulling out a decent length of thread from the cigarette carton. After licking it, he worked one end of the thread through the eye of the needle. He obviously had no trouble seeing what he was doing in the lack of steady light. The glories of night vision. “I still get the occasional weirdo who only wants to fuck me because I’m a monster.” More to himself than to Chan, he added, “Can you believe that being a monster fucker is like… a thing? I read it on the internet.” Then, louder, he said, “We should find you a monster fucker. No. That would be weird, right? Yeah, that would be weird. Let's not find you a monster fucker.” He began threading the needle through the thinning gray skin around the wrist of Chan’s dead hand, the atrophied muscles just a tad dusty. “Speaking of monster fuckers, you remember that Lee Felix guy from the Faculty of Engineering? He is still convinced he can handle my knot. I’ve told him time and time again that normies don’t work like that. They don’t have the room. They don’t have the _space_.”

“You should fuck him anyway. Scare him off werewolf dick for good.”

“And then have to drag the guy into Urgent Care with him dangling from my knot?”

They both fell into a fit of drunken, bubbly giggles.

Changbin motioned for Chan to scoot closer. “As funny as that would be, I’m not traumatizing any nurses tonight. Well… Maybe if he learns my favorite color. My surname at the absolute least.”

The hard part came next. 

Chan had to line up his good arm with his dead wrist and sit perfectly still. Something that was hard to do now that the room was slowly beginning to spin. “Sew, Changbin,” he joked. 

With a snort, Changbin propped himself up on his knees and stitched the two separate halves back whole. It was delicate work, all things considered, but even with his claws, Changbin handled the needle like a pro. His ears were flattened to the top of his skull in concentration, his bushy tail stiff and upright behind him. Every now and then, he’d pull too hard on the thread and a minor zing of pain shot through Chan’s left arm. 

“I hope you find another werewolf,” Chan muttered after several quiet minutes of watching Changbin work.

“They’re around,” Changbin said casually, as if he didn’t particularly care to go looking for any. “I hope you find another zombie.”

On the flip side, there weren’t too many of _them_ around. They weren't allowed in a lot of places. Partially due to the whole ‘spreading incurable contagion through fluid exchange’ thing. Normies and their weak immune systems! Then again, Chan had been a normie once. Back in high school. Worst! Senior! Trip! Ever! And unlike vampires, zombies had no emotional attachment to who bit them, no power over those they bit. No found family shenanigans there. And, to be such a plague, there weren’t all too many zombies left in the grand scheme of things. Seungmin was, like, one of the only other zombies on campus Chan even knew about but Kim Seungmin would much rather lose his fingers blocking goals on the football pitch than pay any kind of attention to Chan. Romantic or platonic.

“You should tell Seungmin you like him,” Chan suggested.

“Look, if I see him tonight,” Changbin hiccuped, “I’ll--”

Chan prompted, “You’ll?” But when Changbin remained fiercely quiet, Chan said, “If you don’t, some other ghoul will get him.”

Changbin abruptly changed subjects, “I hope you find a normie who isn’t afraid of zombies.” Unlike Minho. Unlike that guy upstairs.

“Fat chance,” Chan grumbled.

Finished with his work, Changbin pulled the thread tight, snapped it off with his sharp incisors and then tied the loose end with an unnecessarily cute bow. “There. All done.”

Chan tested out the connection by flexing his fingers. There was a worrying second or two of delay, his fingers unresponsive, but then he managed to clench his hand into a fist. After, with significantly less delay, he spread his fingers wide, fanning them out. “We’re all good. Thanks, man.”

“It’s what I’m here for, yo.” Changbin stuffed the excess thread back into the Marlboro carton and then handed it all back to Chan. As soon as his hand was free, he was reaching for his can of beer again. Taking another loud and noisy gulp of it. “We should get you up and moving. That’ll increase your chances of being seen. I'm going to get you a hottie.”

“You can always try.” Chan made a grab for his brain bottle. With a twist of his freshly reattached hand and a flick of his finger, he effortlessly popped the cap off, sending it flying towards the crowd, and then took a swallow. Oh it was good. He could _feel_ the 20% human brain as soon as the stuff hit his tongue. The tingly, delightful buzz vibrated around his head and zoomed down to his stomach, sending a weak jolt of electricity through his veins and letting him temporarily _feel things_. “Fuck, I love feeling alive sometimes.”

Feeling just as alive, Changbin suggested, “Let’s dance!” He hopped up to his feet.

“I’m a terrible dancer.” Chan sat his bottle on the table, not quite done with it, not quite ready for another sip.

“Seungmin has two literal actual left feet and still dances. You have no excuse.”

But before Changbin could grab Chan by the front of his shirt and haul him up, they were joined at the couch by a surprising visitor.

“Ahh, isn’t it the man of the hour,” Changbin sat back down. “Sup, Jeongin?”

Jeongin tumbled onto the couch cushions between the armrest and Changbin’s gently thumping tail. “Changbin! My main man. Dude, this is like my first time seeing you all night.”

“I haven’t moved from this chair,” Changbin explained. “It’s so comfortable.”

“It better be. It was like five million won. Who’s your friend?” Jeongin pointed around Changbin’s shoulder at Chan.

“Chan,” he introduced himself. “From the Faculty of--”

“I know you,” Jeongin cut him off. He reached across the table for Chan’s bottle and raised it towards his lips. “I've seen you like a hundred times. Is your face on a poster around school or something?”

Chan highly doubted that but it got him thinking. He was so caught up in trying to figure out how the freshie knew him that it kept him from realizing that normie Jeongin had just taken a big ole swig of 20% human--

Jeongin heaved and spit up a mouth full of pink liquid, covering the coffee table in it and startling a nearby group of girls. Jeongin screeched, “Oh my fucking shit!” His entire face went a little red as he coughed-- “What...” and choked-- “...the fuck!” and licked the palm of his hand to rid his mouth of the taste. “Is this fucking PBR?” He lifted the bottle to his face to read the label, gasped, then looked up at Chan.

Ahh, there it was. The wide-eyed shaky bottom lip fear that usually came with a normie finding out he was a zombie. 

It was so damn frustrating. There were mermaids and vampires and werewolves (oh my!) but a _zombie_ was what tipped most people’s scales? He wasn’t even the only zombie on campus! Or was it because Chan just minded his own business and kept his hygiene up? Was it because he wasn’t wearing a dozen mismatched body part prosthetics and his skin wasn’t peeling off? Did normies feel deceived somehow? Oh, he’s a normie like us. We can trust him and look up to him. _Oh wait_! 

What did they want Chan to do when they stared at him like that? Stick out his tongue and scream, ‘Ha! You fell for it!’

“We were going to go dance,” said Changbin, sensing the tension in the air with a flick of his wolf ears.

“Now I remember where I know you from,” Jeongin stated. He wiped a dripping bit of brain from off his mouth but still missed the majority of it shining wetly on his chin. “That sophomore from the Faculty of Economics pulled your whole arm off at that keg party! I have the video on my phone.”

Changbin wrenched the bottle of brain out of Jeongin’s grip and shoved it into Chan’s hand instead. “Let’s go dance.” He grabbed his own beer. “Come on, Chan.”

“Someone _recorded_ that,” Chan asked, bewildered. That night, it had all happened so fast. The pushing, the pulling, the popping, the puking, the passing out. How had anyone caught such a moment in a video? Had they spread it to other people? How many others had seen?

“We’re going to go dance!” Changbin reiterated. He pulled Chan up to his feet, careful not to tug on the zombie’s stitched-up wrist too hard. “See ya, Jeongin. Tell Woojin I said hey.”

Chan let himself be dragged away from the couch and towards the other side of the living room where at least a hundred bodies moved and swayed in the low, bluish lighting. Bodies rubbing against bodies. Hands slapping against asses. Heat rising. Sparks flying.

It really was a zombie horde.

Just hornier.

And with significantly higher body temperatures.

“I’m so fucking sorry, dude,” Changbin slurred, pressing close enough to Chan’s ear to be heard over the bass and the shouting. “He must be drunk as fuck. I already told him about you.”

“Someone recorded that,” Chan dumbly repeated. It was all he could think about, his dumb brain replaying that same sentence over and over. "Someone recorded that!" It wasn’t even his arm popping off that he had problems with, it was everyone else in the room at that time reacting with such obvious revulsion, stepping away from him like they'd never seen an arm flop on the floor before! Then the girl hurled up the contents of her stomach and fainted on top of him. Ugh. He’d smelled like it even after a good bath. “I’m never going to live that down.”

“It’s not your fault, Chan. You didn’t do anything. She was pushy and got what she deserved for not listening to you.”

Yet Chan felt like he was the one being punished with nearly everyone he met being afraid to even shake his hand out of fear they would still be holding on to it after he let go.

Changbin spotted the look on his friend's face. “Let’s dance, Chan. I love this song." When that didn't get a reaction, he kept on, a bit more insistent. "Want me to twerk on you? I’ve been practicing in the mirror. Getting the hang of my individual cheek control.” Changbin pulled Chan between dancing bodies and ducked them beneath swinging red cups and beer bottles as people jumped around and moved to the hard-hitting EDM.

They were closer to the center of the mob now, the heart of the horde. Changbin bobbed his head to the beat, the music both louder yet still somehow harder to hear out here. 

The sound rumbled in the air, the bass of the music so thick Chan could feel it rattle his brittle bones. To steady the roiling sensation in his gut, Chan sucked down a hard and fast swallow of brain. God, it was strong! A kick to the solar plexus. A vampire bite at the throat. The brain lit a fire in his throat and reminded him of the early days, back when he was freshly turned. Back when his normie mom didn’t leave fresh goat brain to boil in the pot long enough and there was still plenty of acid in the lining. But it was the kind of burn Chan liked. The kind of burn that made him ease up and float towards the ceiling a bit.

His limbs lost their stiffness and he found himself moving to the beat. First just his head, then he added a little shoulder, sprinkled on a little razzle dazzle with a hip rotation.

“There you go,” Changbin urged him as they danced together. “Forget your ex. Forget Jeongin. Tonight's about _us_.” He tossed his head back and let out a long, drawn out, high-pitched howl that pierced through the bass of the music and the roar of the crowd. 

There must have been another werewolf or two at the party. Chan heard a faint echo of the howl from the far corner of the room.

“It’s our last free weekend before classes start back up,” Changbin reminded him. “Let’s party!” With a shameless giggle, he spun around and pressed his back against Chan’s chest, revolving his hips to the music. When that wasn’t enough, he arched his back a little and pressed his taut, firm ass a bit more forcefully against Chan’s abdomen, his tail curling up high.

Fortunately, Chan wasn’t drunk enough to grind into the friction. He just sucked another gulp of brain down and wriggled in time with the beat of the music.

He could do this. He could have fun. He could forget about his ex. He could forget about the girl from the Faculty of Economics. He could forget about his arm being pulled off. He could forget about leaving his hand on the doorknob. He could--

“Jisung,” Changbin shouted over the noise, startling Chan out of his reverie. "Hey, look, it's Jisung."

Chan stared in the same direction Changbin was waving to see some guy who had just arrived at the house, it seemed, standing in the foyer. His entrance to the party was a bit dramatic, with the bright light above his head casting him into fearsome silhouette. He wore a big, puffy name brand coat that was far too heavy for the weather and probably too expensive to wear around all of this beer. A beanie sat on top of his head, flattening dyed blonde curls to his forehead. Still, Chan could see the furry tips of Jisung's dog ears, still see the dark curl of fluff of the man’s bushy tail.

Changbin put a little bass, a little _alpha_ , in his voice to shout again, "Han Jisung!"

Jisung heard him that time. He twisted around to look in their direction. Jisung’s 24K gold eyes sparkled when they met Changbin’s from across the room. Jisung smiled widely, exposing fangs, and then dipped his head respectfully towards the stronger wolf.

But there was someone standing beside Jisung that caught Chan’s eye.

Wow, he was an absolute marvel.

Tall. Shadowy dark. Wickedly handsome. Made even taller by knee high boots. Toned thighs absolutely _snug_ in tight leather pants, narrow waist snatched up tight in a corset, the severe look offset by a lacy, almost sheer blouse. 

The man followed Jisung's gaze across the room.

Something happened then. Something stirred. The crowd parted and Chan _felt_ the moment the stranger spotted him. A chill, almost, went up his spine.

Then the crowd surged and ebbed, moving like a tide, and then the stranger was gone. Faster than smoke dissipating.

Jisung didn't seem at all fazed by his plus one's sudden disappearance. He just waved to Changbin before joining the crowd himself, headed in the direction of the kitchen.

But... who _was_ that guy? Chan had really only seen him for a moment, hardly long enough to commit the guy's face to memory, but even that one brief bit of eye contact had been enough to make his whole chest heave as if his rotted, hollow heart had somehow beat one more good time.

"Fuck," Chan whispered. Because he really couldn't think of anything else more fitting to say.

Chan couldn’t think about too much else for long because Changbin had reinvigorated his twerking efforts, throwing it back against Chan like he was being paid for it. Chan kept his eyes on the foyer a second longer but there was no hot stranger.

Oh well.

Chan focused on the music, focused on dancing away the remnants of the shit week he'd had.

One song bled into another.

One gulp of lukewarm brain bled into another.

It wasn’t long before Chan was holding an empty bottle in his hand, his throat on fire and his thoughts like a hurricane. 

Changbin had been pulled away from him in the last few seconds, Chan realized, and it was Seungmin of all monsters that Changbin was now grinding against. The werewolf's tail slipped between the younger zombie’s thighs as if to keep him pulled close.

Chan never would have guessed Seungmin would show up here. When had he arrived? And what had he used to lure Changbin away so quickly?

Chan tried to work his way across the dance floor towards the two of them, zigzagging around moving bodies, but then he remembered how long Changbin had probably been waiting for such a moment, for an opportunity to get so close to Seungmin without the length of the football pitch separating them. Seungmin laughed, a high, bell-like sound Chan could hear even as the zombie pulled Changbin further and further away. Changbin looked over his shoulder then and met Chan's eyes almost apologetically. His eyes burned bright with full-moon gold and he licked his tongue over his fangs.

Chan wasn't familiar enough with dog language to know what that meant. _Gonna go bury a sternum, be right back_ , perhaps?

Seungmin spun the werewolf around so that he could press his chest close up against the werewolf's back. The two of them danced fluidly, arms and legs and hips twisting to the beat as if they'd practiced the choreography even though this was clearly the first time they'd danced together. Changbin reached a hand back and twisted the side of Seungmin’s shirt into his fist. It was the calmest motion but Changbin’s claws still ripped four jagged holes into the cotton. When Seungmin grabbed Changbin by the back of his neck and yanked him backward into a lopsided kiss, Chan immediately knew he wasn’t going to see Changbin until the moon went down.

Chan realized a bit belatedly that he was standing as stiff as a corpse in the center of the dancing horde. What a typical introvert move, losing all of his guts the second his friend dipped! He turned and started to make his way back towards the couch, back towards his expensive six pack of brain so he could down it all and be as dead as the day he was turned, but there was another body pressing close to his now.

A solid chest against his back, hot fingers gripping his waist to hold him close. Hair that wasn’t his tickling the back of his neck.

Chan's body shook a little from the sudden proximity.

Was that a _shiver_? Chan hadn't felt one of those in... a while.

Chan looked over his shoulder but could only catch a glimpse of a head full of dark hair. He lifted a hand, grabbed a fistful of the black locks and pulled until he could see the man’s face.

Shit.

It was the guy from before. The one that had been standing next to Jisung. If he was attractive from a distance, he was even hotter close up. Devilishly cute, even. Sharp nose. Squared-off jaw. Eyeshadow as dark as charcoal. His eyes had this sort of glint to them, reflecting the multi-colored glow of the party. 

“You okay with this,” the stranger asked. Even the movement of his plump lips was absolutely tantalizing. Chaotic. Unstable. The exact opposite of what Chan needed in his life at the moment.

“Yeah,” Chan exhaled. Then he tugged on the sleeve of his leather jacket until Changbin’s stitch job across his wrist was visible, the black surgical thread in stark contrast against his washed-out skin. “You okay with this?”

“Yeah,” the man said. And then... he pressed closer.

Chan was so used to scaring people away that he didn't really know what to do with a normie who wanted to _stay_.

He let the man lead him in their dance. He let the man's fingers dig just a tad harder into the skin above the waistband of his pants. Chan wouldn't bruise. But if the guy kept squeezing like that, there would be little indentations left behind, like his skin was made of dough. Wouldn't that be a sweet keepsake? He wondered how long the grooves would stick to him. How many days he could wear the man's fingerprints like accessories.

A smoldering hot notion, but Chan found himself asking, "Why aren't you afraid of me?"

"You haven't given me a reason to be afraid," said the stranger, his voice like flames against the shell of Chan's ear.

Well, maybe this could actually go somewhere.

"You're the hottest thing in the room," the guy said.

"I'm the coldest and the deadest," Chan corrected him.

"I'll heat you up a little." And then he slipped a hand beneath Chan's shirt and placed indescribable warmth on his hip bone.

And then they danced.

All frantic movements and grinding hips and groping hands at first but when the song changed to something with a lower BPM, something with some vocals, the two of them slowed their movements to something a bit easier to hold a conversation to. Chan loosened his grip on the stranger’s hair, unceremoniously dropped his empty bottle on the floor and spun around until he was facing the stranger. “What’s your name,” Chan asked, because now there wasn't a door that could be slammed in his face.

“Hyunjin,” the hottie said. He was literally hot. The heat he gave off was like hellfire and Chan feared his skin would singe in every place that they touched. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Chan.” He fished around in his slushy head for one specific thought. He found it. “You're Jisung's friend.”

Hyunjin’s face softened a bit. “You know that lone wolf?”

“I know someone who knows him.”

Hyunjin laughed at that. The inside of his mouth looked black and bottomless, framed by teeth white enough and long enough and pointy enough that Chan was immediately convinced the guy was no normie. No monster fucker. The guy looked Chan in the eye and asked, “You wanna go somewhere quieter?”

Chan vigorously nodded. He grabbed Hyunjin by the wrist and pulled him off of the dance floor and to the couch. Surprisingly, the last three bottles of his six-pack of brain were still there. Even the other cans of Changbin’s grocery store off-brand beer remained, untouched by freeloaders.

The two of them sank down on the luxurious couch and popped the tops off their chosen beverages. Hyunjin eyed the label on the glass bottle in Chan's hand. Then he looked up at the zombie with a raised eyebrow and a quirk at the corner of his lips. "You guys really eat brains?" But he sounded genuinely curious, not a split second away from a crass joke.

"It's the stone pillar of our nutrition." Chan decided to save the guy the long-winded explanation about his old, mushy, festering brain absolutely needing to feed off fresh grey matter in order to remember how to keep firing the bare minimum of signals between neurons. Without it, he'd be a mindless beast that only responded to movement and sound. Chan stared at the pink liquid in his bottle. "Let's just say it's an acquired taste."

Hyunjin nodded slowly. "Cool."

Cool. Not _gross_ or _disgusting_ like Chan was used to hearing. Even Minho had said it was _kind of cannibalistic_. Which wasn't... untrue, but it was still a little rude. "I don't eat them straight out of people's heads." Chan decided to test the waters. "Not anymore."

Hyunjin had been staring at his beer can but now he was giving Chan his full attention. But the surprise in his eyes didn't lead to fright. They led to... amusement. "You're fucking funny. You know that?"

Chan had to be dreaming. His patchwork, sewn-together skin was on full display. He'd just made a borderline edgy joke about eating people. Normies made of lesser stuff would have bolted by now but this guy... this guy was no normie. And his interest in Chan? The zombie could literally watch it increase in size as Hyunjin propped an elbow up on his thigh and leaned towards him as if he were the most interesting thing in the world.

Really, it was Hyunjin that was the most interesting.

His eyeliner was winged to perfection. His hair was sculpted and styled with a great amount of effort. His lips were shiny with glittery gloss and Chan could almost almost _almost_ see the man's nipples through the white of his shirt.

They stared at each other for a moment and Chan's chest did that twisted, seizing thing like his heart was beating again. One monumental, absolutely impossible _ba-doomph_ that nearly made the bottle in his hand slip out from between his fingers.

As if sensing Chan's reaction to him, Hyunjin smirked. “I’m going to ask you something really wild,” he prefaced. “Feel free to bitch at me if it’s too crazy. I won't feel bad.”

“Shoot,” Chan gave him permission.

“Has your dick ever fallen off?”

It _was_ a wild question. And out of all the body parts normies had asked him about, his penis had come up surprisingly few times. “Yeah,” he answered. “A time or two.” Definitely an understatement. More like a hundred and two times. If he rolled around too much while he was sleeping, he’d discover it halfway down his pajama pants leg in the morning. Showers! It usually came off during showers, flopping around the drain like a pink-tipped dildo. One time it happened in the middle of a pretty vigorous session with a Fleshlight. His dick just went _pop_ and came clean off.

Let's just say that was one body part he couldn't bring himself to ask Changbin to reattach.

"It comes off every now and then," Chan continued, temporarily breaking eye contact in a sudden fit of shyness. "Luckily I've never lost it. That would be mortifying." He couldn’t figure out a way to be subtle about it so he just boldly placed his hand across his crotch and squeezed. Just to make sure. Yup. It was still attached. Right where it needed it to be.

Hyunjin had been eagerly watching the movement of Chan’s hand so when the guy looked back up and made eye contact with Chan, the tongue darting out across his lips startled Chan back to the bottle in his hand. He took a long, hard swallow and gazed out at the dance floor. 

Seungmin and Changbin were nowhere to be seen but that Felix dude had cornered Jisung against the wall beneath the massive plasma TV, mumbling something in the pup’s ear that had even a big dog like that shivering.

“What Faculty are you in,” Hyunjin asked, as if to steer the conversation back into more familiar, comfortable territory.

“Art,” said Chan. “You?”

“Science,” Hyunjin answered.

The attempt at dialogue fizzled out about as quickly as it had been ignited but it was clear that neither of them were willing to give up yet. Almost at the same time, they slid closer to each other on the couch. Their shoulders pressed together. Their thighs squeezed tight. 

“I was wondering--” Chan began at the same time Hyunjin said, “Did you want to--”

They both stopped, hesitated, and then said “You first” simultaneously.

Hyunjin grew balls first. "Did you want to be an artist?"

"Ehh," Chan grunted. "I wanted to do interior design. I thought it would be all about color theory and pattern matching but it's just endless building codes and real estate laws. It fucking sucks. I switched majors because I'm lazy." He realized he was rambling and made himself stop. "What about you? You're into science?"

"I'm just absolutely fascinated by how this world works," said Hyunjin, putting quite a bit of emphasis on 'this world' as if that was supposed to mean something to Chan. "I'm even more fascinated by its inhabitants." His gaze settled on Chan, hot and heavy.

Chan giggled and then watched in awe as Hyunjin tipped the beer can to his lips and drank from it, his Adam’s apple bobbing, his sheer shirt sliding just a tad off of his shoulder and revealing a slice of tanned collarbone. Chan wanted to ask _What are you_ , because he couldn’t quite tell, couldn't quite figure out what kind of monster Hyunjin was, but then actual fire sizzled in Hyunjin’s gaze long enough for Chan to realize he was dealing with a devil.

Fuck.

No wonder Hyunjin was so smoking hot. He could legitimately catch on fire. His horns were probably hidden underneath his luxurious hair.

Did he have wings? Did he... Did he have a tail? Chan wanted to ask. He really wanted to ask but the way Hyunjin was staring at him kept making his already half-functioning brain short out even further.

Hyunjin wanted him. Stitches and all.

Chan suddenly felt overwhelmed. Like he was in way over his head. But if that were really the case, he could just take it off. “I was wondering if you wanted to go back to my place?” Even if Changbin and Seungmin had beat them there, Chan had his own end of the suite. He had a lock on the door. He had a special music playlist.

"Absolutely," Hyunjin said. His body heat was so infernal. Chan wanted to throw himself to the fire. Be burned to ash. “If you want, we can--”

Someone toppled over the back of the couch, nearly over their heads, nearly across their laps. Hyunjin wrapped an arm around the back of Chan’s neck and pulled the zombie close as elbows and ankles spilled over onto the couch cushion next to them.

It was Seungmin. Two left feet. Legs of wildly different skin tones. One wooden arm, one silicone arm and Changbin a ball of fluffed-up fur trapped between them.

“Fuck, dude,” Chan yelled when he realized who it was. “We were here first. Go make out somewhere else, you son of a bitch.”

Changbin pulled his mouth off of Seungmin’s with a moist noise and looked over his shoulder at Chan. “Dude, don’t interrupt.” Then he spotted Hyunjin. Recognized him. “You’re the new kid on the block! Jisung's new roomie. Hey!”

"The name's Hwang Hyunjin," the devil introduced himself, twirling a lock of soot-black hair around a finger and revealing the curve of one of his horns.

"Jisung's been telling me about how cool you are," Changbin announced.

He wasn't cool at all. He was _hot_ , Chan wanted to say.

"Where are you from," Changbin had to know.

“Just transferred in," Hyunjin pointed to the hardwood floors, “from a… _southern_ university.”

Apparently forgetting he was in the middle of burying Seungmin’s bones, Changbin sat up to more properly engage in conversation. “We’re in the same Faculty, right? Science. Jisung said so. If you ever need me to show you around…”

“Ahem,” Seungmin loudly complained.

Changbin responded with a loud, playfully angry growl before diving down and finishing his work, their mouths connecting messily, their hands tangling in each other's shirts.

Chan thought that was all the interruption they’d get and he was about to resume his chat with Hyunjin but then another figure was diving over the back of the couch on the other side of them, swatting Hyunjin in the back of the head in the process. It was Jisung, looking sweaty and frazzled and stirred-up. His beanie was missing, his ears flicked back and forth anxiously, his hair was a mess, his neck and jaw marked with bright red bruises. “He’s going to make me knot him. We have to go." He rolled to the edge of the couch and stood up, frantically searching over his shoulder for any signs of that feisty, freckled fiend. "I told him I was getting punch from the kitchen. We have to go. I don’t have that kind of health insurance. Hyunjin, we _have to go_.” Jisung grabbed Hyunjin by the arm and hauled him to his feet. 

“I was in the middle of something,” Hyunjin complained, waving a hand in Chan's direction.

That wasn't a good enough reason for Jisung. “You’re the one with the car. We have to go, dude.”

Hyunjin barely had the time to set his barely-touched beer back down on the table. He looked up at Chan remorsefully, nearly pouting. Then a brilliant thought blazed across his mind. "I want to see you again, Chan."

Again? He wasn't going to run away and stay gone? He wasn't going to be like the typical normie and have second thoughts? Chan sat up. "I want to see you again too, Hyunjin."

“It's a _deal_ ,” Hyunjin shouted over the music, fire and smoke and danger flaming across his tongue. He pulled against Jisung’s wolfish strength until he could clamp his hand down hard on Chan’s wrist. Tight. Burning hot. 

Hot enough that even Chan’s old, dusty nerve endings crackled to life for a split second and registered the pain.

Oh shit.

“See you,” Hyunjin yelled as he was dragged around the corner and back through the foyer.

“See you,” Chan shouted after him. He hadn’t used his lungs in ages but he felt breathless. Winded.

Alive.

Changbin’s foot kicked out blindly and connected with his funny bone.

Chan hissed. "Shit, dude, you nearly took my arm off!" He scooted over the couch cushions, sliding away from the mess of tangled limbs off to his right. 

Wow, what a night. Chan could only sit there, suck down the last dredges of his bottle of brain and think about Hyunjin. And the man’s smile, the man’s soft but burning hands, the sultry way they danced and moved together. A promise of other things. The start of something new. Chan could only think about the absolutely terrible fact that he never got to feel Hyunjin’s lips on his skin, never got to feel anything more molten than Hyunjin’s fingernails leaving lasting marks across his hip like a brand. 

Chan had to go dancing with him again. Had to do _more_ with him.

They promised they'd see each other again. They'd made a deal.

A pact.

A contract.

As if triggered by the memory, phantom pain raced across Chan's palm, reminding him of how _hot_ Hyunjin’s skin had been against his own. Hot enough to melt. Hot enough to solder. Hot enough to never go away. To never run from him screaming in fright.

Chan turned his hand over and stared down at his palm.

He would get his chance to meet Hyunjin again far sooner than he expected.

Imprinted on his skin, almost burned into it, almost _tattooed_ onto it, was the devil's phone number.

**Author's Note:**

> [cc](https://curiouscat.me/TheSwingbyJHF)


End file.
